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Leading in cutting-edge automotive research

The Waterloo Centre for Automotive Research (WatCAR) focuses on collaborative research in automotive and transportation systems, by facilitating relations between those within the automotive industry and University of Waterloo faculty researchers. WatCAR also participates in connecting undergraduate students with co-op work placements and graduate students with internships.

Automotive and information technology are converging in today's vehicles at a rapid, disruptive rate. With the largest engineering faculty in Canada and with a computer science school based in the largest mathematics faculty in the world, Waterloo knows this convergence all too well.

As a leading North American academic enterprise, WatCAR offers over 125 faculty with 40+ research competencies. We are a portal for assemblers, parts manufacturers, materials suppliers and regulators, and software and technology companies. See our detailed list of research expertise.

Vision

WatCAR envisions future mobility to be smarter, cleaner and more convenient; available to an increasingly wider segment of society.

Our researchers work to achieve this vision through their expertise in:

connectivity,

cybersecurity,

advanced powertrains,

artificial intelligence,

autonomous driving,

and structural light weighting.

News

When the University’s senior leaders were looking for a service-related department to consider alternative energy vehicles,Central Storesanswered the call and has added a hybrid service vehicle to its fleet.

This hybrid van will be used to transport Central Stores staff around both on and off campus, primarily using electric power. The van will support Central Stores’ services, including freight and mail pickup and delivery, bulk mailing, shipping, receiving, office/departmental moves, event setup, and other initiatives.

Batteries with triple the range of those that currently power electric vehicles could be on the horizon after researchers at the University of Waterloo in central Ontario made a significant breakthrough in the technology.

A new process discovered there uses negative electrodes made of lithium metal, a material with the potential to dramatically increase battery storage capacity.

New research at the University of Waterloo could lead to the development of batteries that triple the range of electric vehicles.

The breakthrough involves the use of negative electrodes made of lithium metal, a material with the potential to dramatically increase battery storage capacity.

“This will mean cheap, safe, long-lasting batteries that give people much more range in their electric vehicles,” said Quanquan Pang, who led the research while he was a PhD candidate in chemistry at Waterloo.